“That’s the idea,” Maureen said. “Since Jaron will be staying here, we’ll tell everyone that he’s your fiancé.”
“What?”
“Is that really necessary?” Jaron asked.
Bonnie hooked her thumb toward him. “I’m with him. Just how am I supposed to convince my parents that I’m engaged to a man they’ve never met or heard me talk about? And besides, everyone will want to meet him.”
“That’s exactly the idea. We want to get Jaron accepted in the community with a rock-solid cover as fast as we can.”
“Can’t I just be a friend of Bonnie’s?”
Maureen shook her head. “People will try to find out about you and wonder why you’re here for so long. If we tell them you two are engaged, then they’ll accept all their information from Bonnie and her family.”
Bonnie moaned. “She’s right. I hate it, but she’s right.”
“Okay, so I’m accepted. Then what am I supposed to do?” Jaron asked. “How long does Quigg think this is going to take?”
Maureen stood. “We’ve been after McDormand for years. Since you two can place McDormand and Sonny together right before the hit, and since you have identified Sonny as the gunman, Quigg thinks it’s possible McDormand authorized the hit. He’s hoping that’s what Sonny will confess when they find him. And as soon as they do, they’ll push for an early trial.”
“That will take months,” Jaron said.
Maureen gave him a direct look. “If not years.”
“Wait a minute.” Bonnie protested. She was not going to have a fake fiancé for years. How was she supposed to meet her one true love if she was engaged? “This is not a good plan.”
Maureen started for the door. “I’ve got to help Clint with the breakfast. Change whatever you don’t like about the plan.”
“I don’t like anything about the plan,” Jaron said.
“Then come up with a better one. You’ll have all day.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
JARON COULDN’T COME UP with a better plan. The best he could do was refine this one—and there wasn’t much to work with, because, except for the fake engagement, it was the best plan.
And since the object was to weave him into the fabric of the town, having him be a B and B guest or a friend of either Clint’s or Maureen’s really didn’t work as well.
It looked as though Jaron had acquired a temporary fiancée.
He and Bonnie had wrapped themselves in blankets and quilts and griped about the situation at length after fortifying themselves with the excellent breakfast Maureen had brought them. Not that Jaron could eat like that every day, but he felt he deserved all the eggs, sausage and hash browns he could manage this morning. And the bread basket was incredible. It contained a selection of homemade toast, English muffins, croissants, cinnamon rolls and blueberry muffins. If that wasn’t enough—and Jaron felt it was—the specialty of the house was walnut griddle cakes prepared by Maureen’s brother, Clint.
If Jay Drake stayed here long, he was going to look the part of a soft, slightly pudgy computer expert.
Once the B and B guests had left for their day’s activities, Bonnie used Maureen’s shower and Jaron used the one in the suite her brother, Clint, shared with his son, Keegan, who was at school.
It looked like that would be the setup until Bonnie the Wonder Plumber hooked up running water to the attic. Since Jaron had had some experience with remodeling jobs, he wasn’t going to hold his breath.
When he returned to the attic after his shower, he found another cot, and Bonnie and Maureen stringing sheets to allow for a modicum of privacy.
As if a sheet would protect her virtue. Jaron hadn’t imagined Bonnie’s response to his kiss—at least not the first one—and no matter what had been said since, that first one counted. Man, did it count.
But she was safe. Jaron had no interest in her virtue, not after last night’s little display on the bike trail, lower lip or not.
She wasn’t interested in him; he wouldn’t be interested in her. And that was final.
Just then, she reached up to hand a clip to Maureen. Today, Bonnie wore jeans and a shirt that rode up when she lifted her arms. It was the first time Jaron had seen her in clothes that fit, and boy, did those jeans fit. Designer clothes might not hang perfectly on that body, but Jaron was beginning to think that the designers had got it all wrong. He exhaled faintly.
It was going to get awfully boring in the attic.
He was wearing his new, now day-old clothes. Plaid did not improve with age. “I’m going to need to buy some more clothes,” he said to their backs.
“We should drive down to Pittsfield and go shopping there,” Bonnie suggested to Maureen, who was standing on a stepladder.
“Good idea,” Maureen replied to Bonnie. “People here would wonder why he didn’t come with extra clothes. And this way, we can make sure he dresses the part.”
“Do you think we can sneak out today?” Bonnie to Maureen again.
“No. Too risky. You’ll have your official arrival tomorrow. You can buy everything before you roll into town,” she answered.
“What about the stuff I left with Aunt Cokie?” Bonnie asked Maureen.
“Quigg will clue her in,” Maureen informed her. “She’ll be part of the setup. It’ll explain about Jay.”
Jaron was not part of the conversation. “Hey!” He snapped his fingers. “Remember me?”
Both of them looked at him blankly.
“I’d like a say in this, too.”
“What do you want to say?” Bonnie asked.
And damned if he could think of anything. “I want to pick out my own clothes,” he managed to state.
“Sure.” Bonnie went back to arranging sheets with a noxious floral pattern across the clothesline they’d strung.
If he had to wake up to that every morning, he’d puke.
And she’d capitulated far too easily about his clothes, which told him the shopping in Pittsfield was really the pits.
The sheets bugged him. One was okay to block her cot from the rest of the room, but they were making entirely too much of a fuss.
It was insulting, that’s what it was. As though they felt he couldn’t control his baser instincts, that the sight of a sleeping Bonnie in her sheep-covered flannel would kindle passion’s flame, or some such rot.
He must have revenge. “Bonnie, will you be doing the renovations by yourself?” He already knew the answer, since she’d told him once before.
“No. Seth Castleman will be working on the carpentry and doing the wiring.”
“My brother likes to do carpentry, so he’ll probably be up here, too,” Maureen added.
Jaron smiled. “Your brother knows the score, but Seth will think we’re engaged.” He waved his hand at the sheets. “He’ll wonder why we’re not sleeping together, or at least in the same vicinity.”
“If he knew you, he wouldn’t,” Bonnie retorted.
“Tut, tut, Bonnie, is that any way to talk to your fiancé?”
“You are not my fiancé!”
“Jay has a point,” Maureen said.
“Do you have to call me that?” Jaron asked.
Bonnie shrugged. “So we’ll just tell Seth what’s going on.”
Both Jaron and Maureen shook their heads. “The more people who know, the greater the risk,” Maureen told her.
“Well...well, does chastity count for nothing anymore? What ever happened to the charming custom of waiting for the wedding night?” Bonnie clearly wanted her sheets.
Jaron gave her a lecherous grin. “Have you, uh, waited for the wedding night so far?”
Bonnie blushed bright red, which told him nothing except that she was embarrassed.
“Jay, stop baiting her.”
<
br /> “Don’t call me Jay.”
“I have to. Bonnie, you should, too, so you’ll get used to it. We don’t want any slips. And something else—you two are not only going to have to get along, you’re going to have to convince the world that you’re madly in love.”
“This isn’t going to work.” Bonnie was still flushed. “No one is going to believe that I’d want to marry him.”
“Ditto,” Jaron said.
They glared at each other.
“Well, make it work.” Maureen closed the stepladder and leaned it between two wall studs. “I’ll be back at teatime.” There was the implication that they’d better behave themselves while she was gone. When she reached the door, she looked back at them. “I really don’t understand you two. Your lives depend on this.” She closed the door.
Good exit line. “She’s right,” Jaron said.
“I agree.”
They warily looked at each other. “All right, I’ll go first so I can be the magnanimous one here,” he said.
“That is so typical.”
He gave her a mock bow. “Thank you.”
Bonnie grimaced when she realized what she’d said.
“After last night, we can call things equal between us. Let’s go from here.”
Bonnie threw up her arms. “Go where?” She slumped down on her cot and stared at her shoes.
Jaron knew she didn’t expect an answer, but he gave one anyway. “I don’t know, but it’ll be a hell of a ride.”
* * *
MAUREEN HAD CALLED Bonnie’s parents the following morning and offered to pick her up from the train station in Pittsfield. So, when things slowed down at the B and B, Jaron and Bonnie hid in the car as Maureen drove out of town, which took no time at all.
Now they were on their way back from their shopping trip, and Jaron had a suitcase full of clothes that were perfect for sawing logs, should the urge ever strike him.
He grimaced at the thought of wearing khaki pants. It was just not his style. His style was black—solid, sleek black. He hardly recognized himself in colors. But that would be the point.
And wonder of wonders, he had his laptop, courtesy of Cokie, who had actually arrived on the train. She’d brought his computer, along with Bonnie’s things, and was now sitting next to him in the back seat.
“You wouldn’t believe the nice young man Captain Quigg sent to watch my apartment. Such a sweetheart—
too young for you, Bonnie.”
“It figures.”
“He’s having girlfriend problems and I’ve made a few suggestions—just a little more polish and he’ll be a gem. A woman is watching your mother’s apartment, Jaron. Nora hired a Mercedes for her to sit in so she wouldn’t be so conspicuous.”
That sounded like his mother. Both Cokie and his mother seemed to be taking this all in stride. In fact, Cokie seemed in remarkably good spirits for someone who was going to perpetuate a lie to her sister.
“Bonnie engaged.” Cokie sighed. “Phyllis will be so thrilled.” She’d said it several times and Jaron was getting uncomfortable.
Apparently so was Bonnie. “Aunt Cokie, you do know that this is just a charade? Jaron and I aren’t really engaged.”
“But you and Jay are.”
Bonnie’s gaze skittered to his and then away.
Cokie smiled at her fondly, then reached into her purse. “I’ve had the best time making up a family for him.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I even wrote them in my address book.” She withdrew several pages of her elegant stationery.
“We already have a rough background for him,” Maureen told her.
“Oh, that. I’ve thought through all those little things a mother wants to know about the man her daughter is going to marry.”
Jaron suppressed a shudder. “You will give me a copy, won’t you?”
“Now, Jaron—or I should say, Jay—don’t you take that tone with me.” Cokie handed him one of the sheets. “This scam will be made or lost on the strength of the details. And Phyllis and Philo—Bonnie’s parents—are detail connoisseurs.”
“She means gossips,” Bonnie said matter-of-factly. “They know everything.”
“And they’ll be the perfect way to spread your story,” Cokie explained. “If Phyllis and Philo pass it on, you can take it to the bank.”
Funny how that ran in the family, Jaron thought, remembering all the tidbits Cokie had fed him for his column.
Bonnie shook her head. “I really hate doing this. This is lying to my parents.”
Jaron felt an unwanted pang of sympathy. “You’re keeping them safe. If they knew who I was, they’d be targets.”
“And who’s to say that it’ll stay a lie?” Cokie added archly.
“I do,” Bonnie said.
“There you go. Two little words in the right context and—”
Jaron interrupted her. “Cokie, what’s NMNCNLTRGE?”
“Never married, no children, no long-term relationship, gainfully employed. It’s a code mothers of marriageable children use.”
“Where’s the H?”
“‘H’?”
“Heterosexual.”
“Well, if you’re engaged... But you never know these days. Everyone, add an H to Jay’s bio.”
Jaron read over the elegant handwriting. “This makes me sound like a nerd.”
“News flash,” Bonnie announced. “Jay is a nerd, which is why no one will believe I’m marrying him.”
“I’ll do my best to be my usual studly self.”
“You’ll have to do better than the best I’ve seen so far.”
“Children, children,” Maureen said from the driver’s seat. She sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “You two need to kiss and make up.”
“No way.” From the front seat, Bonnie looked back at him.
Was that fear in her eyes? Or hope? Whichever, Jaron obligingly blew her a kiss.
She made a face and turned back around. If he moved a little to the left, he could see that her lip was jutting out a bit more than usual.
He smiled to himself, then became aware of the unnaturally silent Cokie, who was watching him with a dangerous smile of her own.
* * *
THEY STOPPED ON the outskirts of town to change seats, because Cokie thought it would look better if Jaron and Bonnie were sitting together.
Maureen turned the car onto School Street, and Jaron saw the elementary school where Bonnie had had her short teaching career. A block farther, Maureen turned onto Main. “Heads up. It’s show time.”
In response, Jaron put his arm around Bonnie’s shoulder. She shrugged it off.
He was being juvenile to get such a kick out of harassing her, but if she didn’t make such a big deal out of it, he’d let her alone.
So. This was Main Street. It looked even smaller in the daylight. To cater to the tourists, the merchants had preserved as much of a late-eighteen-hundreds look as they could. Period streetlamps stood on the corners. Someone had decided on a forest-green, cranberry-red, federal-blue and white color scheme, and the buildings were all painted in one of the colors or a combination. Very appealing, if a person went in for that type of thing. Jaron did not. Faux history was one of his pet peeves. His opinion was to either restore something accurately or leave it alone.
“That’s the library on the left.”
A library. There is a God, Jaron thought.
Maureen was giving them the guided tour—actually more of a tourette, since the place was so small. “And our favorite eating spot—Tubb’s Café.”
“It looks like the only eating spot.” Jaron vividly recalled Bonnie’s description of the plastic flower centerpieces.
“Except for tea at Twin Oaks,” Bonnie said.
Tea had possibilities. He’d eaten some wicked chocolate chip cookies yesterday.
Just past the café, Maureen parked in front of a building with a typical old-timey facade and a sign in script announcing Cooper’s Corner General Store. One side was the grocery, the other the hardware store.
“Everybody ready?” Maureen asked.
“How do I look?” Cokie gave a movie-star smile. “Does this look like an I’m-happy-my-niece-is-getting-married smile?”
“It might be a bit much,” Bonnie said.
“Any less and it’ll be a something’s-wrong-and-I’m-trying-to-put-a-good-face-on-it smile,” she objected. “Trust me. Phyllis will be studying me, and if she thinks something’s wrong, she’s not going to think that it’s because you’re hiding from the mob. She’ll think something is wrong with Jar—ay. Or she’ll think you’re pregnant.”
“Oh, God.”
“That’s the spirit,” Jaron said, not as calm as he pretended to be.
Maureen opened the door. “All right, everybody. Get your game faces on.”
Jaron had absolutely no idea what sort of face to put on for this game. He and Sydney had never taken that crucial step of agreeing to marry. But if there had been an engagement announcement, it would have been at an elegant party with toasts of Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame, certainly not at a country general store. And Jaron didn’t think Jay Drake would like it, either.
Jaron got out of the car, automatically offering Bonnie a hand. When she pointedly ignored it, he blocked her so that she couldn’t stand up. Angry, she looked up, and their gazes locked.
He spoke in an undertone. “I am not happy about our situation, either, but acting like a spoiled child will not improve matters.”
“I am not acting like a spoiled child!”
Jaron raised an eyebrow.
Drawing a deep breath, she exhaled heavily. “These are my parents.”
“Yes, I know.”
“They’re people I love. They’re not like you and your world, and I don’t want you sneering at them.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” How could she think he’d be so ill-bred as to insult her parents?
After Darke Page 11